Monday, April 8, 2013

In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto’s Genetically
Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation’s 25,000 organic farms and
ranches, America’s organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal.

Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, the
executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer
oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto’s controversial
Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for
“coexistence” with Monsanto .

Whole
Foods Market, while proclaiming their support for organics and “seed purity,”

gave
the green light to USDA bureaucrats to approve the “conditional deregulation”
of Monsanto’s genetically engineered, herbicide-resistant alfalfa.
This means that WFM and their colleagues are willing to go along
with the massive planting of a chemical and energy-intensive GE perennial
crop, alfalfa; guaranteed to spread its mutant genes and seeds across the nation;
guaranteed to contaminate the alfalfa fed to organic animals; guaranteed to
lead to massive poisoning of farm workers and destruction of the essential soil
food web by the toxic

herbicides such as 2,4 D to be sprayed on millions of acres of
alfalfa across the U.S.

In its email of Jan. 21, 2011 WFM calls
for “public oversight by the USDA rather than reliance on the biotechnology
industry,” even though WFM knows full well that federal regulations on
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) do not require pre-market safety testing,
nor labeling; and that even federal judges have repeatedly ruled that so-called
government “oversight” of Frankencrops such as Monsanto’s sugar beets and
alfalfa is basically a farce. At the end of its email, WFM admits that its
surrender to Monsanto is permanent: “The policy set for GE alfalfa will most
likely guide policies for other GE crops as well True coexistence is a
must.”

Why Is Organic Inc. Surrendering?

According to informed sources, the CEOs of
WFM and Stonyfield are personal friends of former Iowa governor, now USDA
Secretary, Tom Vilsack, and in fact made financial contributions to Vilsack’s
previous electoral campaigns. Vilsack was hailed as “Governor of the Year” in
2001 by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and traveled in a Monsanto
corporate jet on the campaign trail. Perhaps even more fundamental to Organic
Inc.’s abject surrender is the fact that the organic elite has become more and
more isolated from the concerns and passions of organic consumers and
locavores.

The Organic Inc. CEOs are tired of
activist pressure, boycotts, and petitions. Several of them have told me this
to my face. They apparently believe that the battle against GMOs has been lost,
and that it’s time to reach for the consolation prize. The consolation
prize they seek is a so-called “coexistence” between the biotech Behemoth and
the organic community that will lull the public to sleep and greenwash the
unpleasant fact that Monsanto’s unlabeled and unregulated genetically
engineered crops are now spreading their toxic genes on 1/3 of U.S. (and 1/10
of global) crop land.

WFM and most of the largest organic
companies have deliberately separated themselves from anti-GMO efforts and cut
off all funding to campaigns working to label or ban GMOs. The so-called
Non-GMO Project, funded by Whole Foods and giant wholesaler United Natural
Foods (UNFI) is basically a greenwashing effort (although the 100% organic
companies involved in this project seem to be operating in good faith) to show
that certified organic foods are basically free from GMOs (we already know this
since GMOs are banned in organic production), while failing to focus on
so-called “natural” foods, which constitute most of WFM and UNFI’s sales and
are routinely contaminated with GMOs.

From their “business as usual”
perspective, successful lawsuits against GMOs filed by public interest groups
such as the Center for Food Safety; or noisy attacks on Monsanto by groups like
the Organic Consumers Association, create bad publicity, rattle their big
customers such as Wal-Mart, Target, Kroger, Costco, Supervalu, Publix and Safeway;
and remind consumers that organic crops and foods such as corn, soybeans, and
canola are slowly but surely becoming contaminated by Monsanto’s GMOs.

Whole Foods’ Dirty Little Secret: Most of
the So-Called “Natural” Processed Foods and Animal Products They Sell Are
Contaminated with GMOs

The main reason, however, why Whole Foods
is pleading for coexistence with Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, Syngenta, BASF and the
rest of the biotech bullies, is that they desperately want the controversy
surrounding genetically engineered foods and crops to go away. Why? Because
they know, just as we do, that 2/3 of WFM’s $9 billion annual sales is derived
from so-called “natural” processed foods and animal products that are
contaminated with GMOs. We and our allies have tested their so-called “natural”
products (no doubt WFM’s lab has too) containing non-organic corn and soy, and
guess what: they’re all contaminated with GMOs, in contrast to their certified
organic products, which are basically free of GMOs, or else contain barely
detectable trace amounts.

Approximately 2/3 of the products sold by
Whole Foods Market and their main distributor, United Natural Foods (UNFI) are
not certified organic, but rather are conventional (chemical-intensive and
GMO-tainted) foods and products disguised as “natural.”

Unprecedented wholesale and retail control
of the organic marketplace by UNFI and Whole Foods, employing a business model
of selling twice as much so-called “natural” food as certified organic food,
coupled with the takeover of many organic companies by multinational
food corporations such as Dean Foods, threatens the growth of the organic
movement.

Covering Up GMO Contamination:
Perpetrating “Natural” Fraud

Many well-meaning consumers are confused
about the difference between conventional products marketed as “natural,” and
those nutritionally/ environmentally superior and climate-friendly products
that are “certified organic.”

Retail stores like WFM and wholesale
distributors like UNFI have failed to educate their customers about the
qualitative difference between natural and certified organic, conveniently
glossing over the fact that nearly all of the processed “natural” foods and
products they sell contain GMOs, or else come from a “natural” supply chain
where animals are force-fed GMO grains in factory farms or Confined Animal
Feeding Operations (CAFOs).

A troubling trend in organics today is the
calculated shift on the part of certain large formerly organic brands from
certified organic ingredients and products to so-called “natural” ingredients.
With the exception of the “grass-fed and grass-finished” meat sector, most
“natural” meat, dairy, and eggs are coming from animals reared on GMO grains
and drugs, and confined, entirely, or for a good portion of their lives, in
CAFOs.

Whole Foods and UNFI are maximizing their
profits by selling quasi-natural products at premium organic prices. Organic
consumers are increasingly left without certified organic choices while genuine
organic farmers and ranchers continue to lose market share to “natural”
imposters. It’s no wonder that less than 1% of American farmland is certified
organic, while well-intentioned but misled consumers have boosted organic and
“natural” purchases to $80 billion annually-approximately 12% of all grocery
store sales.

The Solution: Truth-in-Labeling Will
Enable Consumers to Drive So-Called “Natural” GMO and CAFO-Tainted Foods Off
the Market

There can be no such thing as
“coexistence” with a reckless industry that undermines public health, destroys
biodiversity, damages the environment, tortures and poisons animals,
destabilizes the climate, and economically devastates the world’s 1.5 billion seed-saving
small farmers.

There is no such thing as coexistence
between GMOs and organics in the European Union. Why? Because in the EU there
are almost no GMO crops under cultivation, nor GM consumer food products on
supermarket shelves. And why is this? Because under EU law, all foods
containing GMOs or GMO ingredients must be labeled. Consumers have the freedom
to choose or not to choose GMOs; while farmers, food processors, and retailers
have (at least legally) the right to lace foods with GMOs, as long as they are
safety-tested and labeled.

Of course the EU food industry understands
that consumers, for the most part, do not want to purchase or consume GE foods.
European farmers and food companies, even junk food purveyors like McDonald’s
and Wal-Mart, understand quite well the concept expressed by a Monsanto
executive when GMOs first came on the market: “If you put a label on
genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on
it.”

The biotech industry and Organic Inc. are
supremely conscious of the fact that North American consumers, like their
European counterparts, are wary and suspicious of GMO foods. Even without a
PhD, consumers understand you don’t want your food safety or environmental
sustainability decisions to be made by out-of-control chemical companies like
Monsanto, Dow, or Dupont – the same people who brought you toxic pesticides,
Agent Orange, PCBs, and now global warming.

Industry leaders are acutely aware of the
fact that every single industry or government poll over the last 16 years has
shown that 85-95% of American consumers want mandatory labels on GMO foods.
Why? So that we can avoid buying them. GMO foods have absolutely no benefits
for consumers or the environment, only hazards. This is why Monsanto and their
friends in the Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations have prevented consumer
GMO truth-in-labeling laws from getting a public discussion in Congress.

Although Congressman Dennis Kucinich
(Democrat, Ohio) recently introduced a bill in Congress calling for mandatory
labeling and safety testing for GMOs, don’t hold your breath for Congress to
take a stand for truth-in-labeling and consumers’ right to know what’s in their
food. Especially since the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the so-called Citizens United case gave big corporations and billionaires the right
to spend unlimited amounts of money (and remain anonymous, as they do so) to
buy media coverage and elections, our chances of passing federal GMO labeling
laws against the wishes of Monsanto and Food Inc. are all but non-existent.

Perfectly dramatizing the “Revolving Door” between Monsanto and the
Federal Government, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, formerly chief counsel
for Monsanto, delivered one of the decisive votes in the Citizens United case, in effect giving Monsanto and other biotech
bullies the right to buy the votes it needs in the U.S. Congress.

With big money controlling Congress and
the media, we have little choice but to shift our focus and go local. We’ve got
to concentrate our forces where our leverage and power lie, in the marketplace,
at the retail level; pressuring retail food stores to voluntarily label their
products; while on the legislative front we must organize a broad coalition to
pass mandatory GMO (and CAFO) labeling laws, at the city, county, and state
levels.